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MENO Page: 23
of the world-animal of the Timaeus.
In Bacon and Locke we have another development in which the mind of man is
supposed to receive knowledge by a new method and to work by observation
and experience. But we may remark that it is the idea of experience,
rather than experience itself, with which the mind is filled. It is a
symbol of knowledge rather than the reality which is vouchsafed to us. The
Organon of Bacon is not much nearer to actual facts than the Organon of
Aristotle or the Platonic idea of good. Many of the old rags and ribbons
which defaced the garment of philosophy have been stripped off, but some of
them still adhere. A crude conception of the ideas of Plato survives in
the 'forms' of Bacon. And on the other hand, there are many passages of
Plato in which the importance of the investigation of facts is as much
insisted upon as by Bacon. Both are almost equally superior to the
illusions of language, and are constantly crying out against them, as
against other idols.
Locke cannot be truly regarded as the author of sensationalism any more
than of idealism. His system is based upon experience, but with him
experience includes reflection as well as sense. His analysis and
construction of ideas has no foundation in fact; it is only the dialectic
of the mind 'talking to herself.' The philosophy of Berkeley is but the
transposition of two words. For objects of sense he would substitute
sensations. He imagines himself to have changed the relation of the human
mind towards God and nature; they remain the same as before, though he has
drawn the imaginary line by which they are divided at a different point.
He has annihilated the outward world, but it instantly reappears governed
by the same laws and described under the same names.
A like remark applies to David Hume, of whose philosophy the central
principle is the denial of the relation of cause and effect. He would
deprive men of a familiar term which they can ill afford to lose; but he
seems not to have observed that this alteration is merely verbal and does
not in any degree affect the nature of things. Still less did he remark
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